Terror in Tunisia
Yesterday there were three terrorist attacks, the worst of which in terms of loss of life (38 people) occurred on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia that is popular with European tourists. You can read many chilling accounts in the British papers (including the one I linked), because the majority of the victims were British people relaxing on holiday.
The goal: to frighten the West and to harm the Tunisian tourist industry. Mission accomplished. The site was almost certainly chosen for its peaceful-seeming nature (the message being “you are not not safe anywhere”), and also for the extreme unlikelihood that anyone there would be armed, except the gunman, who had arrived in a small inflatable boat and acted like a fellow-tourist until he opened fire with an automatic weapon he’d hidden in or behind a beach umbrella.
The cinematic nature of the scene is evident, but would that it were only a film:
Eyewitnesses say the gunman was was seen laughing and joking among the midday bathers and sunseekers, looking like any other tourist.
But it was claimed he was carefully selecting the victims he would murder with a Kalashnikov hidden in his parasol…
In another chilling account, Ibrahim el-Ghoul revealed how the killer had been smiling.
The trainee mechanic, who works part-time at hotel nearby, said the gunman told him ‘I don’t want to kill you; I want to hit tourists,’ according to The Independent…
A hotel worker said a shoeless Rezgui, who arrived on the beach by inflatable boat, had tried to blend in with the crowd. He added: ‘He opened fire with a Kalashnikov. He was a young guy dressed in shorts ”“ like he was a tourist himself.’
Rafik Chelli, Tunisia’s secretary of state for national security, said the gunman ”“ named locally as Rezgui ”“ entered the Marhaba complex through the pool area.
‘He entered by the beach, dressed like someone who was going to swim, and he had a beach umbrella with his gun in it. Then when he came to the beach he used his weapon,’ Mr Chelli said. Rezgui was shot dead by the security forces.
Because of the Ramadan religious period, there were few Tunisians on the beach and few children because most schools have yet to break up.
Houcine Jenayah, a businessman, said the gunman arrived at speed on an inflatable Zodiac boat.
‘He opened fire and had grenades with him,’ said Mr Jenayah. ‘He hid his Kalashnikov behind a parasol that he had in his hand.’
I’m old enough to remember a few things, and this incident reminds me very very much of the 1997 Luxor massacre in Egypt. In certain ways those were “better” days, because there were fewer terrorists (or seemed to have been, anyway), the internet wasn’t really yet a factor in helping them organize, and some of the strongmen leaders (such as in Egypt) seemed better able to crack down on them.
But the Luxor attack was even more barbaric and horrifying than yesterday’s on the Tunisian beach, if possible, and it took more victims as well. The intent was to depress tourism and the victims were almost all Europeans, as in Tunisia. Unlike in Tunisia, there were two armed guards there, but the guards were outnumbered and they were shot first:
In the mid-morning attack, six gunmen massacred 58 foreign nationals and four Egyptians. The six assailants were armed with automatic firearms and knives, and disguised as members of the security forces. They descended on the Temple of Hatshepsut at around 08:45. They killed two armed guards at the site. With the tourists trapped inside the temple, the killing went on systematically for 45 minutes, during which many bodies, especially of women, were mutilated with machetes. They used both guns and butcher knives. A note praising Islam was found inside a disemboweled body. The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on honeymoon.
The attackers then hijacked a bus, but ran into a checkpoint of armed Egyptian tourist police and military forces. One of the terrorists was wounded in the shootout and the rest fled into the hills where their bodies were found in a cave, apparently having committed suicide together.
Four Egyptians were killed, including three police officers and a tour guide. Of the 58 foreign tourists killed, 36 were Swiss, ten were Japanese, six were from the United Kingdom, four from Germany, and two were from Colombia.
Back then ISIS didn’t exist—but there’s a strong resemblance, isn’t there? And if you’re old enough to remember this one but don’t, do you wonder why? Did it receive less coverage? Was our sensibility not attuned to it because it was over there, and we thought it wouldn’t happen here?
Tourism in Egypt was depressed for many years after that, but it also put the terrorists’ support within Egypt into decline. Realizing that the horrific massacre had not been a good PR move, the group tried to backtrack and, of course, blamed the Jews (among others):
Organizers and supporters of the attack quickly realised that the strike had been a massive miscalculation and reacted with denials of involvement. The day after the attack, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya leader Refa’i Ahmed Taha claimed the attackers intended only to take the tourists hostage, despite the immediate and systematic nature of the slaughter. Others denied Islamist involvement completely. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman blamed Israelis for the killings, and Ayman Zawahiri maintained the attack was the work of the Egyptian police.
This contemperaneous article in the NY Times mentions that the terrorists said their original goal was to take hostages in order to negotiate for the release of Abdel-Rahman, imprisoned in New York for the 1993 WTC bombing. And this article mentioned beheadings. So the connection is quite clear; not much has changed except the scope of the problem, and perhaps (perhaps) the extent of our awareness of it.
Neo: “Back then ISIS didn’t exist–but there’s a strong resemblance, isn’t there?”
You’re saying that ironically, right?
ISIS is just an iterated version of the movement that characterizes al Qaeda.
Of course they sound similar–Islam has always been Islam. The instruction manual has always been right there for non-Muslims to read, yet most are more concerned with expressing outrage about some redneck threatening to burn the Quran in Florida to take the posture of a “good person” than reading the vile text for themselves.
Maybe resorts would be wise to alert guests that security measures are in place in the unlikely event an attack takes place. This means armed guards. The resort is not a gun free zone, so terrorists will target other areas first.
Actually Neo, I remember the attack in Egypt; and it seems to me the new coverage is about the same for both – at least here in the US.
Perhaps that is because the tourists didn’t/don’t include many Americans so the news media doesn’t spend much time on it.
Besides the “hateful” flag nonsense is much more “news worthy.” So, that will be in the news more.
The only thing that will stop the MSM from talking about the CSA battle flag will be when someone starts (and someone other than a blogger – no disrespect intended) pointing out that some of the mainstream Democratic Presidents have used the CSA battle flag in their campaigns. Then, it will be time to find another topic to cover.
Workplace violence.
If a gunman opened fire on beach goers on a Texas beach, how long would it take before someone returned fire?
Probably almost at once, Texasyankee – like Garland, the would-be jihadis would discover to their regret and too late – that cowboys and jihadis is a game yet to be played.
The Luxor massacre occurred about a month after my wife and I returned from a trip to Kenya and Tanzania. I had felt uneasy on that trip. The game camps always had armed guards, our guide carried a gun, and on one leg of the trip we had two soldiers in our van as security against “bandits.” Our guide in Tanzania was a Muslim, but a kinder, more humble person would be hard to find. However, conversations with him indicated that things were not smooth between the Christian and Muslim communities in either country. Subsequent events have confirmed what he told me.
On reading of the Luxor massacre, it gave me pause. I knew that the violence was mostly aimed at the dictatorial regime of Mubarak, but noting all the Muslim terrorism that had occurred in the ME, I decided that, even though we had long wanted to visit the pyramids of Egypt, traveling in the ME was not really safe and would not be until there was peace between the Palestinians and Israel. Thus, we have never been to Egypt or Israel and probably won’t ever visit any ME country. In fact, I am even loathe now to travel to the countries on the north side of the Mediterranean, as Muslim terror is becoming a much more active threat there.
In 1999 I was given a reminder of the Moorish years in Spain. We passed by a construction site where the excavators had uncovered some old Muslim graves. The skeletons were being carefully uncovered and exposed intact. It was a fascinating sight. Maybe a hundred intact skeletons all in repose on the ground where they had been buried. I wanted to snap some photos of this interesting and unusual scene. As I was lifting my camera for a picture, a couple of men started yelling and running at me. They made it plain, in no uncertain terms, that no photos were allowed. It was forbidden by the Muslim religion. They threatened to take my camera and call the policia, if we didn’t move on immediately. Their openly hostile demeanor indicated that they meant business. It was the first time I had felt threatened in a foreign country and, being an American, it didn’t go down very well.
If we travel to Europe again, we will make it a point to stay away from the big tourist areas. Such places are the targets because that is where the targets are.
Egypt is hurting for tourism, now Tunisia will be the same. The terrorists don’t care. Their vision of a Muslim paradise is about as dystopic as we can imagine. Can anyone imagine what living in an ISIS governed city must be like? A modern version of Nazi Germany or worse? Yet, no one that matters seems to care.
Eric:
Yes, I realize that although it’s not the very same people (almost 20 years later), it’s pretty much a slightly different version of the same thing.
Interesting how two eyewitnesses seem to have seen different things 1) he came out to the beach thru the pool, and 2) he came up onto the beach in an (outboard powered) inflatable Zodiac dinghy at speed.
Umbrella hiding the Kalash was common to both sightings
Jimmy J:
FWIW, friends visited Israel for 20 days last year and returned saying they felt safer there than in the US because of the security.
But they are from Chicago.
I have friends who just got back (3 weeks ago) from Israel and taking a Nile river cruise in Egyot. Israel went very well, but they felt uneasy in North Africa. They said many on their tour had canceled and the tourist areas were eerily uncrowded.
It’s been almost 40 years since I read it, but when I heard of this massacre I immediately thought of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger.” Didn’t that center on a Frenchman shooting an Arab while on vacation in Tunisia?
I just finished BEYOND BELIEF by V.S, Naipaul, written in 1995, which covers quite a variety of Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Iran.. I think that I prefer Naupaul’s nonfiction to his fiction. (I feel the same about David Foster Wallace.) I was reading this in particular to visit Iran, for research connected to an ongoing project — but the book turned out to be more fascinating than I’d really expected.
Naipaul doesn’t editorialize much, but when he does… for instance, pointing out how Islam seeks to annihilate each conquered country’s history before becoming Islamic, which accounts for the vandalism and for everyone giving changing their name to something Arabic, so that soon even family trees are no longer remembered: everything begins and ends with complete submission of the individual to the faith.
Education begins (and often ends) with memorization of as much of the Koran as possible.
And, as Theodore Dalrymple, who has worked for many years as a physician in emergency rooms and in British prisons, has written in his books, for young males often the primary attraction of Islam is that it enables them to oppress and abuse women while preening and posing as more virtuous than thou.
Rufus Firefly,
THE STRANGER takes place in Algeria.
The fiction of Paul Bowles, most of it set in Morocco, as he ended up living in Tangier, delves deeply into the differing worldviews of Muslims and Westerners and how perhaps never the twain shall meet. He’s most well-known for THE SHELTERING SKY.
More recently, the Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid has written a couple of novels which go into this realm from the point-of-view of one who has been raised in the raised in that culture but does not believe. MOTH SMOKE and THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST are particularly good. MOTH SMOKE is like Modern Pakistan as the setting for a hardboiled doom-ridden thriller by James M. Cain.
We people in the UK, Germany, France the USA
& all the *civilized* world really, need to ask
????? Why??? we have these inept, incompetent,
blood suckers in high office to enjoy all the
wonderful perks of their existence, golf, state dinners. top notch entertainment, luxury vacations, Cadillac health care, private jet travel
(that adds to pollution obviously), private armed security & what ever else you d like to add & *THEY* cannot even broach the subject of looking for a way to solve this terror problem.
Pathetic Obama, Holder, & sycophants will not even acknowledge it exists !!!! Meanwhile the very poor & the vacationing middle class are
totally expendable to these PIGS in high office all around the world !!! & in office to merely have a
Good old time enhanced by fanning the flames of class warfare here & elsewhere, disgusting !
If you see evil, kill it. Upgrade that Willpower to otherwise you won’t be able to do it.
If you fail to do it, sooner or later they’ll take over and become your Boss, your Authority. You’ll be Obeying them.
Molly NH Says:
June 28th, 2015 at 7:21 pm
We people in the UK, Germany, France the USA
& all the *civilized* world really, need to ask
????? Why??? we have these inept, incompetent,
blood suckers in high office to enjoy all the
wonderful perks of their existence…
NATO Officials: We ♫ are the ♪ world! ♫♫♪…
Nice!
I blame the voters ….
So g6loq, in addition to lavish perks & do nothing job goals & accomplishments we peons are supposed
to fawn over their music skills……
Angela Merkel showed Lizzy the view from her office
& they chatted over a cup of tea, that amazingly, Angela “makes herself” she told Lizzy.
And sadly the head of the Church of England has had
scant interest in calling attention to the vile murders
of Christians, & Francis, if I recall said something once 6 months ago, climate change is more important.
Jimmy J: Peace between Palestineans and Israel has nothing to do with any of this of course. While most Islamists would probably prefer to kill Jews first, that is NOT a strong preference.
Ira: “Jimmy J: Peace between Palestineans and Israel has nothing to do with any of this of course.”
Maybe not. I would guess, though, that such a condition would make ME tourism much safer, as it would indicate the savages were mostly unable to cause trouble for others – for whatever period that might be.
And sadly the head of the Church of England has had
scant interest in calling attention to the vile murders
of Christians, & Francis, if I recall said something once 6 months ago, climate change is more important.
Climate change is a matter of morality.
I, G6loq, am immoral.
Note: that chick hold an IFR license and likes to fly small airplanes around to nowhere in particular.
Also, getting and IFR license as a private pilot!
That’s mucho dineros baby ….
I am G6loq ….
So who were those peeps who said Global Warming was about science, not about being a fanatic?